


Wonderland Dimension

by thisisashittyusername



Category: Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton), Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M, Gen, Sibling issues, and meets the red queen, deep down red queen has a heart, did you see how well she treated um???, dude she's a misunderstood fave, i cant write but i did have an idea, i dont know where im going with this, like ford kind of, stanford gets himself into the wonderland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-08 11:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11080704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisashittyusername/pseuds/thisisashittyusername
Summary: A man shows up in Wonderland. The Red Queen would like to be his friend.





	1. Chapter 1

When the Red Queen first sees the man, it is when she's seated on her throne, and he is being dragged to her, accompanied by two cuards.

"Queen Iracebeth," one of them says- the one not grappling him by the arms. The cuard makes up for it by aiming the spear at him warily. "We saw this man peeking into the castle, by the gate, seeking lodging."

"I-" the man starts, but the other cuard hits him. The man's head whips down, the crown of his head being the only thing Iracebeth sees of him. It stays that way.

"He had weapons with him," the first cuard continues, when the Queen doesn't comment. Her head merely tilts to the side inquisitively. "-yet he claims to have no allegiance toward the White Queen. He claims to not even have any knowledge of her. Or you."

 

The hall is silent when the Queen stands. Slowly, and with purposeful steps, she saunters over to the group. One pale hand around her staff, her other hand whisks toward the cuards, motioning to let the captive go.

The man drops to the floor with a grunt, suddenly deprived of the hands he let handle his weight. The Queen kneels to his side, surprisingly. She lets her hands cup his face- her fingers against his firm cheek, her thumb against his jaw- and angles his reddened face toward her. They look at each other.

 

"You," she breathes. "-are a very beautiful man."

The man's eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. He wonders if, maybe, he should say thank you. But he was also a firm believer that, in the face of such power, he should probably just talk when he was spoken to. That was the way with his bullies before, and it didn't get him into any more additional insults / punches- it should work now.

"And you wear my kingdom's colors well," she adds, eyes briefly darting toward his chest.

Honestly, though, the man still feels confused.

 

He lets this confusion sound when the Queen suddenly slaps him. "Ah-!"

"Your beauty doesn't fit in my domain," she says, tone suddenly ice cold. The fingers that were daintily on his face grip him sharply, and her nails painfully dig into his flesh. "You are _very_ beautiful- the kind my sister always sought to blind me with." Her eyes bear into the man's, emotionless, even as she calls to the others. "Cuards. Take him away."

"N-no!" the man suddenly shouts, and Iracebeth admits- _he sounds just as good as he looks._ (Sadly, it is the melody of a man who was about to die.) The cuards grab him by the arms again.

"Please, wait! I wasn't going to harm you!" he pleads with her, even as he is hoisted effortlessly from his seatedness. The Queen stands as well, dusting the front of her dress, and watches the cuards manhandle the soon to be headless, beautiful man. ( _Would it be too much to ask for his head when they're done? It is rather wasteful._ )

Before the cuards can pull him any further, however, he manages to grab the Queen's arm. The Queen shrieks.

 

One of the cuards immediately pulls the man's arm away from Iracebeth. "Oh, goodness- Highness, are you alright? Did he hurt you?!" The other cuard is already pointing his spear at the man's jugular- so close, the man was afraid to swallow lest his throat catch on the steel. He raises his hands upward, in surrender, his thighs shaking with where he was kneeling on the floor.

"Please," he whispers. "I didn't... I'm sorry, I-"

"My liege, please speak, are you injured? Should I call the guards? I-"

"You almost  _killed the Queen_ , you deserve to die, you-!"

The hall is swamped with their echoing voices, and it gives Iracebeth a migraine.

 

"Stop," is all she says.

A moment passes as the cuards look at their Queen in confusion. Obedient, anyway, the cuard beside her stops fussing and stands straight, while the other aims his spear down, slowly, all while eyeing the man warily.

Iracebeth, for a second time, comes near the man.

 

"I..." he says to her, voice suddenly quiet. "I'm sorry for touching you."

"Stand."

He obeys her. He stands- winces when he pushes himself up- but does exactly as she asks. He seems keen to avoid eye contact, even when she tries to look at him.

"Stranger... It seems as though I've made a mistake," the Queen says, apologetic and suddenly friendly. The man's eyes snap toward her, again, in question. "You belong here, with us." She brings his hands into her own, before smiling.

The man stares at her. "E-excuse me?"

"Yes?"

"I don't... understand."

"I'm letting you stay here with me," she says, as if she didn't just want him dead seconds ago. Her mouth is still poised in a smile, as if pleased with the prospect of her idea. "I will do as you wish. You seek lodging, am I right? Then you'll be my guest, and you can stay as long as you like."

She looks to her cuards. "Make sure this man is taken good care of. Treat him as you would treat me."

"Yes, M-majesty," the cuards salute, just as stunted as the man himself. The man watches them vacate the hall, probably to prepare things for him.

His eyes dart back to the confusing lady in front of him, still smiling.

"If... If I may speak freely?" the man says to her.

"Oh, of course you may," she is quick to respond. She laughs, indulgently. "Silly."

"What made you change your mind?"

 

Iracebeth sighs dreamily. "At first glance, stranger, I would've thought my sister sent you!"

Though he doesn't even know these people- hell, he doesn't even know if she was being serious about the lodgings, the man thinks that it's sweet, to be in such a great relationship with her sister enough to start sharing friends.

" It's nothing new of her to send me beautiful people," Iracebeth continues, still bright-eyed. "to distract me with their lies, and their blonde hair, and their fake names, and finally bring me to a state in which I have no love left for the people I thought I could trust!"

 

Ah- well. Wow. That wasn't sweet.

 

The Queen, he notes, is still smiling- but now it's bitter. She's not looking at him, and she looks lost in thought. "Of course, she would bring me beautiful people- those as beautiful as her and just as... _rotten_... with lies... deep down. _Just like... her_."

A couple of beats pass before she regards him again. "But you don't fit into that. You're not beautiful like her, first of all."

The man interjects. "You said I was. When you touched my face, and..."

"Yes, well," she waves her hand dismissively. "Not if your hands have anything to say for it."

 

The man flinches, and by instinct, hides his hands behind his back.

 

"Oh, stranger, you have nothing to feel so defensive about!" Iracebeth coos, quick to come to his aid when she notices. "I said you weren't beautiful the way my sister was." She smiles. "But that doesn't mean you aren't beautiful like me."

"Here, everyone like us fits in. What with my big head, and you with your twelve fingers," she laughs, and the man feels lighter somehow. At least now he knows the whole decapitation thing was revoked for real. It wasn't a prank or something. "We may look different, and they may smile, and laugh, and make songs about us," Iracebeth says to him, eyes wide, "but we will always be so much better. We aren't rotting inside, like them, like how they throw their trash away with no second thought."

"Don't you think," she says softly, "that we deserve a place, for once, in this beauty-absorbed world?" She looks at him through her eyelashes. "Us, little, misunderstood things?"

 

The man still looks incredulous, but for once, his own eyes soften. Iracebeth knows that look well enough, even when he says nothing. She's seen it in the mirror more times than she'd admit. "You'll be safe here," she assures him.

"Thank you." he bows his head slightly. This beautiful man, with his beautiful jaw, and his odd, but welcomed, twelve fingers. It occurs to the Queen that he doesn't even know what to call him.

 

"And here I am, talking my heart away," she laughs, pointing at her heart-shaped lipstick, appreciating her own joke. "Iracebeth of Crims." She extends her hand.

The man smiles at her, before shaking firmly. "Stanford Pines."


	2. Chapter 2

“So,” Stanford begins awkwardly, the next day when the Queen invites him for breakfast. They’re outside, by the garden where the Queen played her golf. She’s wearing her usual, pompous attire, but now wore red shades. “ _Cuards_?”

“Yes, well,” the Queen replies, as she sips her tea, waving away dismissively with her free hand. “They’re _cards_ , they’re _guards_ … Cuards it was.”

“Ah. That’s rather…” Ford thinks of a tasteful term. “Ingenious.” He finds that he means it. He was rather lacking in the pun department; he found that drifting through dimensions wasn’t exactly a good environment for fostering that talent. Or any kind of fun, for that matter. Besides, in his youth, it was usually Stanley who-

 

_Stanley._

The Queen’s mouth tilts upward slightly, pleased. “Why, thank you. I thought of it myself.” She looks briefly toward Stanford, obviously to shower him with praises of her own (they say positive reinforcement was a good way to make you look more agreeable to others- besides, it didn’t have to be a lie, there was plenty about this man she could go on about), but is taken aback at his expression. “Stanford?”

Ford snaps out of his trance with a quick shake of the head. “I’m sorry,” he says meekly. “Did you say something?”

“You look awfully distracted,” she comments with a raised eyebrow. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I just,” Ford replies, a hand pressing at the bridge of his nose. He remembers something. “… _Didn’t you say you had a sister_ , Queen Iracebeth?”

Iracebeth snorts. “Yes.”

“And, uh, what was she like? How was your relationship with her,” and when the Queen looks at him, Ford looks away. He reminds himself that he was talking to a monarch, and to ask questions so freely as an underling (was he really? He wasn’t from here, first off) wasn’t… well. Safe. “- _only if you don’t mind me asking._ ”

“That’s quite a loaded question,” Iracebeth sighs in fake exasperation, but she pauses to smile at him anyway. “But you’re a guest in this castle that I hold in high regard.”

The Queen goes back to eating her breakfast.

She says nothing more. A servant comes by to refill their drinks, and to offer them new food items, like tarts or milk flans for dessert. Ford feels confused- _where was the answer? Why did she leave it so open-ended?_

(“Off with their heads,” he remembers an irate, tyrannical Queen ordering, in one of the books he used to read as a child. He forgets the name…)

He decides not to push his luck; that is, until the Queen starts speaking. “My sister,” she says, and she takes a huge chunk out of the blueberry tart in her hands. “is a rather distasteful person.”

He lets her finish her dessert before she continues.

“She used to be a wonderful person,” Iracebeth sighs. “Until one day, when she _let me down_.”

Ford finds that he relates to this, and wants to know more. “What happened?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” she admits. “But I _can_ admit that she is a horrible person. She lied, and she stole my future. She broke my heart,” and Ford remembers Stanley, laughing off the Perpetual Motion machine _he broke-_

(“Although if you think about it,” his idiot brother says, with that doofus, unknowing, insensitive smile on his face, “maybe there's a silver lining. Huh _? Treasure hunting_?”

There, the buffoon was- _excited_.

“ _Are you kidding me_?!” Ford had shrieked.

And Stanley’s face just dropped. Ford remembers how _good_ that felt, seeing it up close.)

“I suppose I understand how terrible that must have been,” Ford mumbles, laughing bashfully.

“You have a sister, too?” Iracebeth leans toward him, interest piqued. Though her eyes are on him, she continues to sip on her fourth glass of pink (more of red, really) lemonade through her straw.

“Ah, no,” he laughs again. “A twin brother, actually.”

“I won’t go assuming you two are estranged, like with me and my sister,” the Queen drones on, haughtily, “-so I’ll keep any negative comment at bay.”

“Oh, no, we are!”

Iracebeth grins widely. “Oh, well, I did assume so. What _ever_ did the _jerk_ do to such a wonderful man like you?”

Ford quite likes this more outspoken, less sovereign-y side of Iracebeth. He decides to mirror her ‘support’ with his own. “Well, just about everything her warm, delightful Highness has said about her own, knuckleheaded sister.” He bows curtly, in jest.

“Oh, Stanford, _stop_ ,” the Queen giggles, and Ford can’t help the laugh of his own. “The more you flatter me, the more I’m tempted to murder your brother for you.”

Ford only smiles, considering the idea. Well, not really. He hated Stan, but not that much. He only liked how _amazing_ it was to finally have someone who understood him. Besides, “He’s not here.”

“Ah, I understand, you’ve already delivered him into the heavens,” the Red Queen jokingly concludes, going back to sipping her drink. “Good for you,” she nods.

“No, my dear Queen,” Ford chuckles. “I meant he isn’t in this… _dimension_.”

“Well, if he finds himself here, by any chance at all, tell me immediately. I’ll give him a welcome he surely won’t forget.” Iracebeth winks at him.

“Oh, I’ll be by your side the whole time.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *groans*
> 
> i cant write for shit, watch as i make the characters more ooc as chapters pass

Ford kneels to the ground, shovel in hand. The flaps of his trench coat lay on the dirt gracefully when he does.

Iracebeth doesn’t understand why the man was so keen on wearing that… thing. Surely, it looked good on him- _really_ good, so good she could’ve been cheating on Stayne for even _thinking that way_ , but still. It’s been _weeks_ since Stanford’s gotten here. There were very skilled tailors in her kingdom, and the Queen wanted only the best for her guests. Even Alice, under the guise of Um, had been treated well. But then again, the girl _was_ naked when she got here, so she had no alternative.

As for Stanford… Well, perhaps, if he wanted to wear something that coincidentally made him look _really good_ then why should she stop him? The trenchcoat _really_ did fit the role he said he had (- a scientist, which explains why they were in the middle of god-knows-where, cataloguing random plants, at the _middle of the day_ ), and the red sweater underneath was just tight enough to accentuate _his chest, and-_

“Tell me more,” Ford says, without turning to her.

 

Iracebeth sputters dumbly.

“ _Excuse me?!_ ”

 

In her panic, she tries to recall all the conversation’s she’d had with him since he came, and while there are some that detail his being a scientist, none about him being a _mind reader is part of them!_ (Maybe he’s like that pesky worm, Absolem- an oracle, with that intrinsic knowledge of things! _God. Why._ )

She doesn’t know what to say- ‘I’m sorry for thinking that way about your manner of attire’, ‘it really does fit you, haha, fit you too well, _it’s rather tight_ ’, or ‘I’m sorry, I’ll hide myself in my quarters now until you depart’, but she stills when Ford just laughs. (It was nice for him to finally laugh. It took a few weeks to get him to do it- he was sort of clammy and quiet the first time around, but now he was more open. It was good. It was good to hear.)

“Was it offensive to ask that you tell me more about yourself?”

“Myself?” she repeats.

“Yes,” Ford says, simply. He digs the shovel into the ground to retrieve a plant. It was purple and had prickly leaves, and  it leaked and smelled. Iracebeth watches Ford handle those delicately with his cloth gloves. “What it was like, growing up here. How your parents were.”

Ford looks back at her, and Iracebeth swears his eyes start gleaming. She doesn’t really understand the man’s insistent curiosity about her personal life, but thankfully, if it meant her new friend was no mind reader, then she’d take that any day. She feigns calmness, even when she definitely panicked back there. “There’s nothing much to really say,” she huffs disinterestedly.

 

When Ford stands, he has the plant in a basket, ready for extracting back in the castle, with the technology the Red Queen’s enabled him with. Surprisingly, for a dimension as… weird… as this, it had very sophisticated technology. “Come now, Queen Iracebeth, I’m sure there were some interesting things in your past worth mentioning!”

“Well, even if there was, it’s still no fair!” She starts to whine as they head back. “How come you’ve asked so much about my history, yet I know nothing of yours?”

“You know me!” Ford says in defense.

“I don’t know enough,” Iracebeth pouts contemptuously. “I don’t even know why we came so far to get that ugly,  _slimy_ plant.”

“It’s for a weapon.”

“A weapon? What would you need a weapon for, it’s safe where you are in the castle!”

“It’s for an enemy- an _extremely_ powerful being- back in my dimension," Ford chatters on. "This plant, I noticed, had a smell similar to something we had back there: something we call _gasoline_. I’m taking it back to the castle to see if it also shares similar traits to it; maybe I could then extract its important components to function as some kind of primitive ga-”

 

“Stanford,” Iracebeth sighs. “When I told you to tell me about yourself, I didn’t mean for you to do it in an indecipherable way.”

“Sorry,” Ford grins sheepishly. “I’m making a bomb.”

“For your enemy.”

“Yes. Bill Cipher.”

Iracebeth snorts. “Is that your brother’s name?”

“Ah. No. My brother and I share…” Ford looks away sternly. “-more than a face, unfortunately. We also have somewhat of the same name.”

“There was a merciful fate for me, after all,” Iracebeth sighs into the skies, palms closed as if in prayer. Ford laughs.

“Yes, I suppose it is some blessing you have.” Ford laughs again, sheepish, running a nervous hand to the back of his head. “Looking into a mirror and not being reminded of…” he trails off, stopping in his tracks.

 

Iracebeth notices the tension in the way he carries his shoulders, and realizes that, well, there was something wrong. And she should do something- after all, they’re technically close friends now- she cares enough about him to want to do something. And what to do now was to comfort him.

Really, though, Iracebeth knew nothing of how to do… _that_. Usually, it was her being comforted by others, not the other way around.

She used to do it to Mirana, when they were young and scared easily, until Iracebeth realized there was nothing scarier than cold reality- that, at any time, someone you loved enough to protect would cause your downfall. It was a terrible feeling: one that made her own heart closed to notions of care and love.

But seeing Stanford now- a kindred spirit, someone who _absolutely understood_ just what it was like, to be duped by someone you loved- it gave her that moment of openness.

She had to at least try.

 

“Stanford,” she sighs. “Do you need your time? We can stay here for a while.” She sits herself on a rock, trying to look nonchalant- not at all bored or worried or condescending or pitying or _whatever the heck_ she was feeling toward the man. If Ford needs his time, she’ll give him his time.

She knows, anyway, how much time is needed to heal even just a fraction of the pain. She’s tried it before.

She failed.

But that doesn’t mean Ford has to go through the same.

 

But the man just clears his throat. “I’m fine. Let’s go.” He walks ahead of her.

She gets up to her feet and follows. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. This,” he coughs awkwardly. “Isn’t new. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

She laughs easily, eager to comfort her titled, ‘kindred spirit’. “Well, if a moment of weakness seen by me warrants an apology, I should be saying sorry to myself a lot more,” she says gently.

Ford looks back at her, surprised, but laughs along anyway.

Apparently, trying to heal, failing, and also failing to move on, was something he probably was no stranger to, too.

 

It was a comforting, somehow.


End file.
